December 20, 2005

Is Open Source Gaining Adoption In Europe?

by Manuel Ángel Méndez

with Reineke Reitsma, Ashara Giordanelli

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Despite fears about lack of technical support or commercial viability, European firms have been actively adopting open source solutions over the past two years. Today, almost 40% of companies already use some type of open source software, and a further 8% have plans to pilot it during 2006. Utility and telecommunications firms, media companies, and public sector bodies lead enterprise adoption by a wide margin. Forty-five percent of the firms using open source have deployed it in mission-critical environments, although the vast majority (70%) uses it for non-key applications. Web server and server operating systems are the top two areas, with two-thirds of firms using alternatives like Apache, Tomcat, or Linux. Usage for application server solutions like JBoss will also see heavy piloting activity next year. When it comes to the benefits of using open source, it's all about cost: An average of 72% of European firms claim lower TCO and lower acquisition costs as the key advantages over commercial software.

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